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Comment by barry-cotter | Hacker News Reader

This doesn't even make sense. Even with a civilsational collapse like the fall of the Western Roman Empire or the various Germanic invasions people remember things. The Turks of Turkey knew their ancestors came from the East and conquered the lands of Christians. The Japanese knew that their high culture came from China. The Egyptians knew that there was a time when they were not Arabs. There are Irish legends about when the Celts invaded.

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> The Egyptians knew that there was a time when they were not Arabs.

They still aren't Arabs...?

Feel free to tell any of the Arab speakers from Khuzestan in Iran to Morocco that. If you want to do it in the written form of "their" language it won't be what they speak with their family or friends . It will be based on the Arabic of the armies that erupted out of Arabia in the 660s. The only language descended from that with a separate written standard is Maltese.

Perhaps you're confusing "Arabic", the language group, with "Arabs", the ethnic group?

> the Arab People are an ethnic group[56][79] and a nation[80] mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Indian Ocean islands (including the Comoros), and Southern Europe (like Sicily, Malta, and formerly in Al-Andalus / Iberian Peninsula).[81] The Arab diaspora is established around the world in significant numbers, in the Americas, Western Europe, Indonesia, Israel, Turkey, India and Iran.[82][83][84][85][86] In modern usage the term refers to those whose native language is Arabic and identify as such, this contrasts with the narrower traditional definition which referred to the descendants of the Tribes of the Arabian Peninsula.[87] Islam started in Arabia, Arabic is the language of Islamic scripture, and most Arabs are Muslims. However, only about 20% of Muslims are Arabs.[88]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabs

Arab countries are those where the majority of people speak Arabic. Iran is not an Arab county, but Iraq is. Turkey is not an Arab country, but Egypt is.

Huh, it looks like usage has shifted over time to mean this. I recall Arab as referring to a Semitic ethnic group but it appears today we use it to refer to speakers of Arabic. Well, TIL.

Iran has a significant Arab community.

> Most Iranian Arabs in Khūzestān Province speak Arabic and Persian. The Arabic spoken in the province is Khuzestani Arabic, a mixed of Gulf Arabic and Mesopotamian Arabic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Arabs#:~:text=Most%20I....

1.6 million people is certainly significant, so you're not wrong. But leaving it at that without more information is likely to mislead people.

> The CIA World Factbook (which is based on 2013 statistics) gives the following numbers for the languages spoken in Iran today: Persian, Luri, Gilaki and Mazandarani 66%; Azerbaijani and other Turkic languages 18%; Kurdish 10%; Arabic 2%; Balochi 2%; others 2% (Armenian, Georgian, Circassian, Assyrian, etc.).[20]

> Other sources, such as the Library of Congress, and the Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden)[21] give Iran's ethnic groups as following: Persians 65%, Azerbaijanis 16%, Kurds 7%, Lurs 6%, Arabs 2%, Baloch 2%, Turkmens 1%, Turkic tribal groups (e.g. Qashqai) 1%, and non-Persian, non-Turkic groups (e.g. Armenians, Georgians, Assyrians, Circassians, Basseri ) less than 1%.[22] For sources prior to and after 2000, see Languages and ethnicities in Iran.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Iran#Languages...

So does the USA, but the USA isn't an arab country either.

Many of my colleagues are Egyptian and I find it very interesting to hear the mix of identities they espouse. For some their identity as Arabic is very important to them, whereas others feel more Egyptian and dare I say predominantly Western. Some will almost always talk and write in vernacular Arabic (and it fascinates me to see the ASCII dialects they use in Slack) whereas others still venerate classical Arabic. So, while I suspect people will correct you that technically yes they are, it still seems a complex subject.

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